This November, to recognize and honor National Adoption Awareness Month, I've invited adoptee poet Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello to curate a folio of poems by 10 Asian American adoptees. This page features “War Department Theater” by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs. I invite you to take a moment to read her moving introduction to the folio here, as well as the other nine poems in this collection.
— Eugenia Leigh, Poetry Editor
• •
A T T E N T I O N
all personnel
"SEX HYGIENE"
a showing
War Department Theater at 1 p.m. this date
Gentlemen, to master the aerial
zoom into the microbial
Here you tunnel vision
Here you dry mount
a dyed fatale splayed across glass
slides unzips a cursive
No love letters, this girl
crawls inside and fuses
If unable to resist your urges
recall your blond sister in Montana
the sure shot preacher’s kid
your Rust Belt common sense
as you make surface contact
the ticking clock
tied to your inner thigh
where her spirochetes corkscrew in
Don’t go it alone, Casanova
Hold your position / in the auditorium
Flank VD / with a clean shaft
of light / to project a major / to protect us
Father says: Go pro, kid
if you dip in deep kimchi
Strike fast / a green mountain hideout
Look out for moose
chancres / hanger queen
a shell strapped to your metal abdomen
Whirr through gossamer / curtain the ground
From the cockpit / watch it
shudder / swallow
wound / womb
as you make a clean break
This piece was published as part of the November Adoptee Literature Folio. To see other works from the folio, please visit the table of contents here.
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